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Chiral plasmonic nanostructures

Twisted by DNA

Nature Materials volume 13, pages 846–848 (2014)Cite this article

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The optical properties of self-assembled plasmonic nanoparticles can be reversibly tuned by using DNA strands.

Noble-metal nanoparticles occupy the top drawer in the toolbox of scientists working with optical materials. These nanoparticles confine light in extremely small volumes, and their individual scattering properties can be designed virtually at will by shaping and arranging them carefully. When their behaviour is considered collectively, the nanoparticles can also be used as building blocks (meta-atoms or metamolecules) for metamaterials — engineered materials with effective homogeneous properties1,2. In fact, the versatility of metamaterials is to a large degree determined by the ability to shape the units they are made from, and thus their collective properties. In particular, bottom-up fabrication methods based on DNA-assisted nanoparticle self-assembly enable the precise arrangement of large volumes of complex metallic assemblies (metamolecules) in three dimensions. Furthermore, nanoparticles can be used to transduce topological or physiological information of their surroundings to the optical domain. By combining the optical transducing ability of metal nanoparticles with the capability of DNA to execute a programmed design recipe, one can make sensors and media with controlled response to light polarization3,4. Now, writing in Nature Materials, Anton Kuzyk, Na Liu and colleagues report a protocol to tune, dynamically and reversibly, the optical properties of chiral metamolecules by using DNA strands to reconfigure their shape5.

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Figure 1: Sketch of the DNA-driven mechanism for tuning the configuration of assemblies of metal nanorods in solution.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Andrea Di Falco is at the School of Physics and Astronomy, University of St Andrews, St Andrews KY16 9SS, UK,

    Andrea Di Falco

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  1. Andrea Di Falco
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Correspondence to Andrea Di Falco.

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Di Falco, A. Twisted by DNA. Nature Mater 13, 846–848 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat4068

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